


Serendipity

by vegetalass



Category: Fallen Hero Series - Malin Rydén
Genre: F/M, Female puppet, Gender neutral Sidestep tho, her name is lemon, self harm mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-12
Updated: 2019-03-12
Packaged: 2019-11-16 02:11:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18085427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vegetalass/pseuds/vegetalass
Summary: He knows he doesn’t know the half of what happened, or tries to understand that at least. But really, when has he ever really understood a thing about you?You always act like there’s not a thing he could know about being left behind. Yet, you left him for seven years after at some point deciding as Sidestep to never let him in, either. He doesn’t want to blame you, but knowing you were reluctant to be with him at all hurt more than any kind of fucked up self-harm he could ever cause himself and ever might.





	Serendipity

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to @jedimasteramell on tumblr for beta reading! Cross posted on mine as well.

Ricardo Ortega is not a man who believes in coincidences. He is also not a man who believes in luck. Kindness? Yes. Faith? Maybe.

But coincidences? Never.

It takes enough out of him each day just to watch Angie glitter in the sun, or witness Herald as he leaps from tall buildings and lives, that he doesn’t even want to bother with thinking about the other types of insane things that the people of Los Diablos can do because of some dumb diet pills.

This has always included you. Ortega knows that you can read people’s thoughts. He knows that you can predict somebody’s actions. And he knows you can enter into someone else’s mind. But that doesn’t mean he ever really thinks about why, especially since you’ve never been able to mess with his.

And that’s how he likes it, having this balance between understanding and ignorance. Peace and war.

Push and pull. 

Ortega also likes you, and it’s both a good and bad thing that you can’t read his mind.

It was funny, at first. Watching a frail-bodied vigilante dance around the Rangers until they let you team up. Watching as you helped take down enemies that he couldn’t even dream up in his imagination. Watching himself as he fell into the deep hole that concluded with falling for you and then no one else ever again.

Even if he didn’t know it at the time, the world was dark before those days. The world was even darker after he watched you die.

It was as if the fucking sun went out with the Heartbreak Incident, and didn’t come back on until you came back into his life with it.

He honestly didn’t know you were still alive. He watched you jump.

Death isn’t coincidental. It can be explained.

And to him, you were dead.

He’d tried everything after that: booze, sex, pills… There’s not a thing you can name that Ricardo Ortega didn’t try. And damn, did all of it hurt. But it never once fixed him, and it took a lot of pull Ortega from that sadness.

He can’t say he was ever really cured.

Until suddenly, there you were. Back from the dead, like a zombie, or as he would insist later at your frown, like some kind of “Sleeping Beauty.”

Christ, he fell hard.

He knows he doesn’t know the half of what happened, or tries to understand that at least. But really, when has he ever really understood a thing about you?

You always act like there’s not a thing he could know about being left behind. Yet, you left him for seven years after at some point deciding as Sidestep to never let him in, either. He doesn’t want to blame you, but knowing you were reluctant to be with him at all hurt more than any kind of fucked up self-harm he could ever cause himself and ever might.

He was never reluctant about you. He never would be.

Because he believes in kindness. Forgiveness. Faith. 

He’s trying to at least.

So meeting Lemon must’ve been some kind of serendipity.

She is someone different. Someone who smiles at him, and laughs, and cries, you know, when she gets hurt. Someone, who in all forms, is kind, and normal, and open. Someone who lets Ortega smile at her and take her out as though he isn’t a modded freak the public loves to fuck over. 

Even though she always dances away after every single meeting; never to be touched, or violated, or broken, she’s never jumped from Ortega’s arms out a window into a world that doesn’t play catch. 

But Ortega plays catch.

You always run away, too, though now you let Ortega kiss you more. But there’s that separation; the line that exists between you and grace, and everyone else. Lemon dances, and you run. You kiss Ortega, and Lemon runs.

Lemon is a happy variable, if not replaceable, but the difference is that you keep coming back.

That’s another thing that’s funny: that you even still exist. He hasn’t really gotten used to thinking that you always have, even after those long seven years. The fact that you still kiss him is funny, too.

Maybe it would’ve been better if you had died for real. Then he wouldn’t feel so guilty, or lost when he looks at Lemon and thinks of you. You could’ve stayed the sad and mistreated love that died in the Heartbreak. But you’re alive, and the two of you have to cope with that, even if living and loving is a cruel thought.

Because Ortega does love you. It’s just hard to keep it up when he knows you don’t want to be. Whether you actually do love him back is a different conversation all together.

He doesn’t want to call this girl, Lemon, “another.” He could never do that to you. But sometimes it’s fun to play all these pretend games, because at least Lemon plays them back, and because they’re the most painless form of self-torture that he is capable of. The kind of torture that he knows will never leave visible scars and that no one will ever be told about.

Lemon is good with secrets like that. It’s almost as if she’s not really there.

Too perfect, too happy, too... far away for anything past going on dates and smiling but never touching. He’s not sure if he even wants to touch her.

But Ricardo sees things in her, things that he could never voice lest God come down from his throne in high heaven just to personally ask him about. Though the crinkle of her eyes is different, and the color unfamiliar, her laugh is the same and the quirk of her smile remains etched into his mind as though the corners were turned up by someone entirely different.

Ortega doesn’t believe in coincidences. He doesn’t believe in luck, either.

So why is this the only explanation?

Why is he trying so hard to believe that it’s more? Like part of you sits with Lemon when she sits with him. This time, it has to be more than just another little slip made in one of his many attempts to finally forget about you and move on. More than just another admission that he still thinks about you all the time and can find your face in anyone.

Everyone.

But it’s never just that, is it?

Specifically in some random girl who bumped into him. He knows it wasn’t on purpose. Why would it be, even though it hurts?

But Ortega lets himself have this. Occasionally

He lets himself think about marrying this random woman, Lemon, who is not you but has your smile, and same order of coffee and chocolate, and even the mirrored image of your goddamn forehead crease when he makes a joke so incredible that even you have to raise your eyebrows in a laugh.

It’s silly of him to think he could ever be normal, and that even if the timing is correct, Lemon bearing the ghost of your face is more than just a weird fluke. 

His fault.

Mamà Elena would be disagree. Mamà Elena would be happy for him, and happy for Lemon, too. It would different, you know, after you, but it would be one more reason to make her happy and convince her that he’s finally safe and happy and well. Even when he’s not.

Even when he misses you. The _old_ you. Mamà does too.

And when people get old, they expect certain things. Mamà expects good things for her son, and her son, Ricardo, wanting to laugh and cry, is no different.

Because after losing you and then watching you come back to life all bitter and still sad, it’s hard to stand by and feel hated by the very person you would die for.

Ricardo loves you. He really, truly does. But he’s learning to care for himself, too. To stop waiting for people who do not want him. And one day, he will run out of time.

But that’s fine, because when looking at Lemon is a temporary pleasure and reminding him of the old you, he allows himself to think of her. To think of what could be, had a part of him not died with the old you. He also allows himself to think of you after that, and forgive you for running away.

And though Lemon is a sweet dream in place of you, Ortega still cannot say that he believes in coincidences, because just as she dances away and never wants to go farther, at least he can say you came back. 

Because it’s peace and war. Push and pull.

And he can’t be mad at you for trying.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
